Stakeholder and resource-based antecedents and export performance outcomes of green business strategy

Environmental concerns have been significantly heightened over the past few decades with the effect of industrial development, which results in several ecological disturbances (e.g. air and water pollution, climatic changes and soil erosion). In line with this, the rapid increase in environmental issues have also reshaped both domestic and international markets via creating a strong pressure on companies which have been under examination of several stakeholders such as governments, support groups, employees, customers. In addition, the promulgation of ecological issues has a crucial place for particularly exporters, since they have been exposed to ecological challenges in their international activities such as more environmentally sensitive customers, stricter environmental regulations, higher environmental public concern. In response to these pressures, environmental operations have gained an increased attention from companies by means of adapting their strategic decisions regarding to these ecological issues. However, companies also necessitate specific resources and capabilities in order to address pressures derived from their stakeholders and implement green business strategies, which in turn, enhances companies' export performance. In this context, building upon insights from stakeholder theory and resource-based view, the aim of this study is three-fold: (a) to investigate the direct effects of stakeholder pressures (i.e., employee pressure, customer pressure and government pressure) on organizational resources (i.e., top management commitment, financial resources and human resources), organizational capabilities (i.e., shared vision, relationship building and organizational learning) and green business strategy; (b) the indirect impacts of organizational resources and capabilities on the link between stakeholder pressure and green business strategy and finally; (c) the effect of green business strategy on export market and financial performance. In line with this, a mixed-method approach was adopted in this study and first, a qualitative study which aims to explore both drivers and outcomes of green business strategies among exporting manufacturing companies was executed. In this sense, thirty-two semi-structured and face to face interviews were performed with executive managers from 22 companies and examined by the help of content analysis. Second, a quantitative study was conducted in order to test the conceptual model within this study. In total, 235 questionnaires were collected from Turkish exporting manufacturing companies and the data was analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results of the study demonstrated that stakeholder pressures have strong and positive effects on organizational resources and organizational capabilities. Also, organizational resources, capabilities and stakeholder pressures have significant impacts on green business strategy, which in turn, influences positively export market and financial performance. Furthermore, organizational resources and capabilities play a mediator role on the association between stakeholder pressure and green business strategy, which implies that companies lack these resources and capabilities will not be able to deal with stakeholder pressures and implement effective green business strategies. Hence, this study reveals several noteworthy implications for both policy makers and business practitioners via providing a comprehensive understanding on green business strategies within exporting context, which is grounded upon stakeholder theory and resource-based view.